Brian Damage
01-30-2009, 12:12 AM
When Berry Gordy, erstwhile boxer and assembly-line worker, founded Motown (then called Tamla) in 1959, the pop-music industry was little more than a hustle. But like so many post-war industries, the record business was a hustle that was intimately tied to the American Dream, and men like Gordy, Leonard and Phil Chess, Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegŭn, hitched their ambitions to the sounds emanating from black America. Where Gordy distinguished himself from the legendary founders of Chess Records and Atlantic Records, there was a belief that he was not simply trying to sell black music to the crossover masses, but making black artists—and by extension black people—palatable to white audiences. As Gordy recently recalled, he often told radio-station executives, “Wait a minute—it’s not really black music. It’s music by black stars.” That simple distinction made all the difference for Gordy, who championed his company as the “Sound of Young America.”
To that end, Gordy’s artists were enrolled in what was essentially an in-house finishing school: To his credit, he turned a group of lower-middle and working-class black Detroit youth into some of the most popular figures of the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, the Motown Star system turned Diana Ross—never the best singer on stage or the prettiest woman in the room—into the very symbol of glamour, particularly for a generation of Americans who were not familiar with black women such as Lena Horne or Dorothy Dandridge. Gordy’s strategy was simple; capture the attention of white audiences in the span of two minutes and 30 seconds with a series of catchy hooks, easily-remembered lyrics and sweet harmonies and make them comfortable with the black artists delivering the goods.
By the end of Motown’s first decade, the company was easily the most recognizable black brand in the country, if not the world, even as the tenor of the times and cutting-edge production of the late Norman Whitfield pushed the label’s music more in sync with the militancy of the day. If Motown hadn’t produced another record after it jettisoned its Detroit roots in the early 1970s for Los Angeles, its legacy as one of the most important black-owned companies would have remained intact.
But by the early 1970s, Gordy saw Motown as much more than a record company, branching out into film, with movies like Lady Sings the Blues (1972), Mahogany (1975), The Wiz (1978), television (The Jackson 5ive cartoon series) and even musical theater with Pippin. As Gordy devoted much less attention to his recording artists, acts like Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder were still at the peak of their careers and a new generation of artists like Lionel Richie & the Commodores, Teena Marie, Rick James and later, DeBarge helped carry the Motown brand beyond its first two decades. Even Michael Jackson, who left the Motown fold with his brothers in late 1975, could claim the influence of Gordy and Motown just as he established himself as the “King of Pop.”
http://www.theroot.com/views/happy-birthday-motown-turns-50
To that end, Gordy’s artists were enrolled in what was essentially an in-house finishing school: To his credit, he turned a group of lower-middle and working-class black Detroit youth into some of the most popular figures of the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, the Motown Star system turned Diana Ross—never the best singer on stage or the prettiest woman in the room—into the very symbol of glamour, particularly for a generation of Americans who were not familiar with black women such as Lena Horne or Dorothy Dandridge. Gordy’s strategy was simple; capture the attention of white audiences in the span of two minutes and 30 seconds with a series of catchy hooks, easily-remembered lyrics and sweet harmonies and make them comfortable with the black artists delivering the goods.
By the end of Motown’s first decade, the company was easily the most recognizable black brand in the country, if not the world, even as the tenor of the times and cutting-edge production of the late Norman Whitfield pushed the label’s music more in sync with the militancy of the day. If Motown hadn’t produced another record after it jettisoned its Detroit roots in the early 1970s for Los Angeles, its legacy as one of the most important black-owned companies would have remained intact.
But by the early 1970s, Gordy saw Motown as much more than a record company, branching out into film, with movies like Lady Sings the Blues (1972), Mahogany (1975), The Wiz (1978), television (The Jackson 5ive cartoon series) and even musical theater with Pippin. As Gordy devoted much less attention to his recording artists, acts like Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder were still at the peak of their careers and a new generation of artists like Lionel Richie & the Commodores, Teena Marie, Rick James and later, DeBarge helped carry the Motown brand beyond its first two decades. Even Michael Jackson, who left the Motown fold with his brothers in late 1975, could claim the influence of Gordy and Motown just as he established himself as the “King of Pop.”
http://www.theroot.com/views/happy-birthday-motown-turns-50